People want to know what I personally use to build links. And the answer is complex. I use a lot of tools, methods, and resources to do it… There’s no one tool I use that can do everything I need done so I use several.

Today, I’ll talk about my favorite tools that I’ve been using over the past year or two. By the way, these tools all cost money. They’re way better than any free alternative I’ve found so I’d rather pay the monthly subscription rather than use third rate software just to save a buck or two – the attitude I’d recommend for any true business owner.
Search Engine Nuker

This is a really cool tool that can help you get top 10 rankings in Google as little as 24 minutes (no joke, I’ve done it). Currently this program is the cornerstone to my traffic building efforts and for good reason. It is extremely powerful, and unlike some of it’s competitors, has outstanding support, is updated frequently, and it actually works (most programs like this are buggy… to say the least).

To say exactly what it does takes quite a while because it has so many different things it can do. For example, need to submit and article to article directories? It’ll do it for you. Need to get your site on social network sites – again, it’ll do it for you. Want to bookmark your sites? You guessed it, not a problem.

Rather than going into a long explanation of everything the software does, just go to SearchEngineNuker.com and give it a try yourself – the first 7 days are free and the trial is fully featured. I highly recommend it, though, and probably use it in some capacity almost every day.

Traffic Geyser

Traffic Geyser is a top of the line video distribution service. Look, these days you need to be doing something to rise above the noise and stand out from the competition, and one way to do it is to use video. Yes, a lot of people have started to use video, but most people still aren’t. Be one of the smart ones that use video to promote your websites.

Now if you’re on a tight budget, you can probably get away with not getting Traffic Geyser right away. You can get decent results just submitting your videos to Youtube or if you only make a few videos a month, the free version of Tubemogul is a good alternative.

However, when you really want to get the most mileage out of a video, it’s time to use Traffic Geyser. They not only submit to video sites (24 at the moment), they also submit to social bookmarking directories, podcasting directories, have a transcription service that you can use to create articles that can be automatically submitted to article directories. It’s a really sweet system.

If you’re interested, be sure to use this link to get the first 30 days of service for $1.

Article Marketing Automation

When it comes to article distribution, article directories are good and work, but you’re better off if you can get unique content on blogs, not article directories. That’s exactly what this program does. They’ve built and extremely large network of blogs looking for free, high quality content. And in return for the content, you get links to your sites.

I really like this program and it’s helped me get some pretty nice rankings in the health niche so I’m happy to give them a shout out for creating a great piece of software.

Linkvana

I really love this tool. I’ve been using for for almost two years now and it’s really a tool built by professionals for professionals.
I’ve read in forums people saying that they don’t use it because it costs too much. And to me, that’s music to my ears because I don’t want everybody and their brother using this tool. I’ve been using it to get high rankings for competitive keywords and haven’t found anything that does a better job yet.

Using the system is a little bit of work, but that’s why it works so well. Basically, what it does is uses a large private blog network to build one way links to your websites, and these links perform great.

The price tag for this software is $147/month and you still have to pay for the blog post writing or do it yourself, and most people don’t like it. However, that’s precisely why this software works so darn well.

If you’re really serious about increasing your rankings, you’ll give it a try. If you have several sites you do work on (or do work for clients – yes, I’m 100% comfortable using this program on a site for a client) then consider it essential.

Unique Article Wizard

I remember when I first heard about the program back in 2005 (it had a different name back then, though). I thought it was the coolest concept I’d heard of for article distribution. It’s no longer the only game in town, but it still gets me links I wouldn’t otherwise get and is still well worth the price of admission ($67/month).

Where I get articles written.

Obviously, I need A LOT of content to use the tools above, and I certainly don’t do it all myself. I don’t mind doing a little writing myself now and then, but I certainly wouldn’t go so far as to call myself a writer at this point so I outsource the vast majority of my content creation.

And it really depends on the project I need done. If I need high really quality articles written, I’ll seek out an expert on Elance or Rentacoder and pay a premium price to get someone who really knows the subject matter well (get authority level content from subject matter experts). Most of the time, however, I just need basic content written to get me links so I’ll use the bargain priced services of Need-An-Article.net ($5.52/article).

Is this all I do?

No, it isn’t. Honestly, there are a lot of methods I haven’t gone into here that I use to build links, but those are the major tools I use and they can give your site a major traffic boost if you use them (Please note they aren’t magic wands that make traffic magically appear – you have to USE them). If you really want to tackle high competition keywords, you’ll need to go above and beyond those tools, but for many people the above 5 resources will get the job done most of the time.

I’ll give you one more nugget of information in this post… none of the tools above does press releases (you can get them written for $17 at Need-An-Article.net) yet it’s an extremely powerful way to get traffic instantly AND to build high quality backlinks for the future. Use them. I really like PRweb.com if you can swing it in your budget, but have also gotten good results from the cheaper alternative, Webwire.com (The $20 option works fine).